edge. A chrome grill shaped like an angry mouth whirred by my head like a Frisbee then hung itself onto an aerial. Debris from the apparently over-full ashtray stung all my eye lenses. The toad sticker malfunctioned and exploded. The jolt almost severed my right, upper arm.
I landed hard on my back, but, running on lower abdominal instinct, the left lower fired the shotgun.
“Aghhh!” The guy let out a squeal, his arms flew up and he was knocked back behind a metal box.
I painfully dragged myself up and tossed aside the charred remains of the toad sticker. I set the Drilling for the rifle barrel and touched a claw to the trigger. My upper right arm was twisted around at an unhealthy angle and one of my antennae were smoking, but I didn’t see any flames so I ignored the excruciating pain and approached the metal box as carefully and quietly as my crusty claws would take me.
The corpse was severed in half. He’d been human all right, but something was wrong. The cut was too clean. And what kind of self respecting time jumper would carry an Edsel Sling? That was a larva’s weapon.
I picked up the sling; it had two cartridges left. I pulled three frogmentation grenades off the body. I was glad he didn’t use one of those, Kacekans don’t really feel fear, but I still didn’t want to die being smothered by a swarm of slimy, squirming amphibians. Soft, yuck; just the thought made me shiver. At least I was now better armed.
It was then that I noticed the body was hollow.
This was no human. I’d eaten enough of them to know that there’s supposed to be lots of good stuff on the inside. Now it’s hard to sneak up on a Kacekan, and nobody gets the jump on PeeDee3, but I heard someone, someone stupid, creeping up behind me. The rear eye wouldn’t open; the lid had apparently been fused shut when the toad sticker exploded. Blind to my back, I spun around ready to fire, but instead of another upstart gunslinger there was a K-tel Presents the Greatest Explosions of the Millenium Featuring Nagasaki, Mars 2, and the Squomlog-Vorheesian War (extended version) rolling toward me at thirty-three and a third revolutions a minute.
Now I knew this guy was no pro. That kind of hardware would destroy the whole quadrant. It was gonna make a bigger boom than when the Grand Exalted Exhalator’s spleen ruptured. This guy was either a lunatic bent on galaxy wide destruction, or worse, a bounty hunter like me. All loss is acceptable for a buck.
I pressed the button on my jump box and hurled it towards the disc. No time to reset the coordinates, this bomb was going to land at the front desk of the Galaxy Law Enforcement Headquarters. If they didn’t know how to deal with it then so be it.
The bomb and my jump box disappeared in a flash of charge and I was left stranded, but I was still standing.
My antennae picked up something. I turned, watching all around, and spotted the slimy break I needed.
I followed a gooey, yellow trail from the human shell to the edge of the hive and peered over. Just as I suspected, a Cargolian was slithering down the side. Cargolians are tough, awfully tough, but I happen to know that beneath their hard outer shell there’s a soft, tasty center. He was my only way off that dump and besides, I took being shot at personally. So I went over the side after him.
When he hit ground level he started slithering away at top speed, his beady, black eyes turned this way and that on their narrow stalks.
Cargolians can move really fast, and the slippery trial they leave can dump a pursuer on his ass easily enough. But I’d been in the business long enough to have picked up a few tricks. Most beings don’t know that in a pinch the Coleco Edsel Sling could be used as transportation. I placed a cartridge on the ground and fired on the lowest setting. When the Edsel materialized I crammed myself inside, started the flat-head engine, and followed the yellow slime trail.
Killing always gave me an appetite, so I snatched the handy, pine flavored, tree shaped snack dangling from the rear-view mirror and swallowed it whole.
Earth passageways are clogged with similar vehicles, but for some reason they’re afraid of traveling on the narrow passages set close to the hives. So except for the humans running around like panicked gazelles, I had a clear path.
He slimed along at full speed, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Ahhh! Help, help!”
No one there was anxious to help him though.
In no time I was gaining on him. I activated the forward screen wipers to clear the mess the humans were making of it and accelerated. I ran him down as he tried to loose himself in a crowd of the hairless primates.
The Edsel screeched to a halt and slammed up against a couple of two wheeled motorless vehicles, and their riders screamed out in pain; understandable, those things looked dangerous, someone should make a law against them. I squeezed my bulking frame out and found my mark lying in a pool of human fluids and his own sticky ooze. He was curled up tight inside his fractured, semi-round shell.
The humans were hysterical. You’d think they’d never seen an insectoid apprehend a slug before. It was just this type of overreacting that would cause their downfall when the searing-acidicbuttworms invade.
I lifted the edge of his shell and out poked a trembling white hand holding a mini-molecular disrupter dripping with snail-ooze.
“Yeoww!” He screamed as I smashed the weapon, and his hand, in the vice-like clamp of my claw.
I flipped his shell over but he was locked up tight inside. I looked around and spotted what appeared to be some sort of weapon vendor’s cart. I grabbed a pair of tongs, a salt dispenser, and a meat cylinder resting in a little bread bed for myself (technically, except for the snack, I hadn’t eaten for several thousand years). I probed into the shell with the tongs until I felt something squishy and then I pulled out one of his eye stalks, one beady black eye stared terrified into my complex eyes. “Talk to me snail.”
“Noooo, never!”
He tried to pull his eye back inside and I let him have it with the salt.
“Bleeaaahh!!” he screamed and almost squirmed completely out of his salt-filled shell.
“Stop! Please, PeeDee3, it burns!”
He knew my name so that meant he was in the business. I gave him another dose from the dispenser. “Ahhhh!” Trying to get away from the salt he slithered all the way out of his shell and writhed on the ground, his eye stalks had all but vanished, his slimy, ghost-white snail skin fizzled and fumed.
I grabbed him by what I judged was his sticky neck “Who are you after?” I demanded, but it was no use, no hit man worth his beryllium would give up his mark.
But I could be very persuasive.
His voice gargled and slime oozed from his mouth. “The same mark as you, the same as you!” He coughed up a glob of phlegm, then extended his stalks toward me and opened his eyes wide, pleading. “But I wouldn’t have come after him if I knew it was your mark, please, you have to believe me PeeDee3.”
“Then tell me this, where’s the jumper?”
He reached for the disrupter and I gave him another dash.
“Aghhhh, no more, no more! I thought you were the jumper.” The words dribbled from his sagging mouth.
I dropped the slug and considered the facts. So that wasn’t his imploder. That meant that my guy was still on the loose, and knew I was coming after him. This mark just got more expensive, and a lot more dangerous. The snail made a last feeble grab for the gun and I emptied the remaining salt ammo onto him. “Gahhh!” As he fizzled away I searched his shell. His jump box and some papers were all I found.
I heard a wailing of sirens and figured something, somewhere must be going down. It was time to go. The jumper had won the day, but there’d be another time. I didn’t soon forget anyone who managed to give me the slip. I had a reputation to protect.
Nor could I disregard that he might try to hit me first. That’s what I would do if someone as dangerous as me was after me.
I grabbed the spiral shell and set coordinates on his jump box. Most hit men have a price on their heads so the day wouldn’t be a total loss; I just hoped hi
s shell would constitute fifty-one percent of his corpse. It turned out I would have to wait a while to actually collect though. It seemed the intergalactic law enforcement headquarters had to be rebuilt in a different quadrant; apparently something had happened to the old one.
I pressed the jump box’s activation key and wondered what had happened to my bodily remains? Fifty-one percent of PeeDee3 would be worth a few bits.
-Next Time-
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